American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation [Hardcover]

Mr Caleb Crain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2001

"A friend in history," Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "looks like some premature soul". And in the history of friendship in early America, Caleb Crain sees the soul of the nation's literature. In a sensitive analysis that weaves together literary criticism and historical narrative, Crain describes the strong friendships between men that supported and inspired some of America's greatest writing - the Gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the novels of Herman Melville. He traces the genealogy of these friendships through a series of stories. A dapper English spy inspires a Quaker boy to run away from home. Three Philadelphia gentlemen conduct a romance through diaries and letters in the 1780s. Flighty teenager Charles Brockden Brown metamorphoses into a horror novelist by treating his friends as his literary guinea pigs. Emerson exchanges glances with a Harvard classmate but sacrifices his crush on the altar of literature - a decision Margaret Fuller invites him to reconsider two decades later. Throughout this engaging book, Crain demonstrates the many ways in which the struggle to commit feelings to paper informed the shape and texture of American literature.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Lingua Franca contributing editor Crain examines the tradition of sympathy and friendship between men in early American life and literature. Interpreting Charles Brockden Brown's novels Wieland and Arthur Mervyn, Emerson's essay "Friendship," and Melville's Billy Budd, Crain shows how a tradition of male discourse and ideas presents itself through personal life, friendships, and artistic creations. Using the writings of Plato, Montaigne, Bacon, and Adam Smith and insights gained from letters and diaries of the period, Crain follows a history of the ideas of friendship and compassion as they change and develop. The romantic aspect of the death of the British spy John Andre, early American diarists in Philadelphia, William Godwin's influence on Brown's thinking, the circle of friends around Margaret Fuller, and Melville's great personal hero, Jack Chase, are all carefully detailed. Written from a lesbian and gay studies perspective, the volume discusses overt sexuality and hidden desires. A fascinating study, this should be highly useful for lesbian and gay studies and literature collections. Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Caleb Crain is a contributing editor for Lingua Franca magazine and writes for The New Republic and The New York Times Book Review.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300083327
• ISBN-13: 978-0300083323
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #535,956 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, Please, May 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation (Hardcover)

For us lay readers, books from academic presses can be dangerous: we so crave the erudition and level of scholarship that such a book might offer, but we balk at the sight of jargon (particularly if that jargon encompasses the phrase "policing the meta-text.") Crain's book is beautifully written and heavily researched, but is never given to terminology understandable only to people in his field. His account of the way in which personal life informs literary creation is fascinating--especially in the instances of Charles Brockden Brown using his friends as guinea pigs for his Gothic fictions, and of James Gibson and John Fishbourne Mifflin's love-infused diaries. Great stuff.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful Criticism, May 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation (Hardcover)

I read a lot of literary criticism, particularly of American literature. I found AMERICAN SYMPATHY to be an insightful, provocative, and sensitive study of a small group of American authors: Charles Brockden Brown, Emerson, and Melville. It's one of the best studies of recent years, utilizing the insights of gay and lesbian studies to reveal the depth of male-male love that these writers experienced and, at the same time, that generated some of their most interesting writing. It's a book about romantic feelings, not sex, so don't read it to find about the dark and dirty secrets of Melville or Emerson. Read it for its literary insights...and clear, well-written prose. This is literary criticism doing what it does best.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sympathy for the Nation, May 22, 2002

By 

Andrew Epstein (Tallahassee, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation (Hardcover)

Caleb Crain's lively, provocative study is both a pleasure to read and a very important foray into a subject that has yet to receive much attention: the ambivalence towards friendship at the heart of classic American ideologies of self-reliance and democracy. Crain uncovers fascinating connections between the development of American literary art and evolving ideas about sympathy and intimacy in the early years of the American republic. The book convincingly argues that American literature continually grows out of, reflects, and sometimes masks mixed feelings about intimate friendship, at the same time that it charts the changing "style of relationships between men" in the developing nation. The revealing, groundbreaking chapters on the lives and works of writers like Charles Brockden Brown, Emerson, and Melville are brimming with both insightful analysis and narrative flair: unlike so many literary critics, Crain writes with verve and style, and knows how to tell a good story. Highly recommended for both American literature specialists and general readers.